1 The Jewish religion began thousands of years ago in the Middle East. Jerusalem is a holy city to the Jews. Many Jewish families moved to Europe over the years. In the early 1900's, Jews began to mount a movement to reestablish a homeland for themselves in Palestine. The British government issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917. It stated that they were in favor of the Jews establishing a national homeland for the Jewish people. The League of Nations, established after World War I, went along with the Balfour Declaration. In 1922, they put Great Britain in charge of Palestine.2 You can imagine that the Arabs living in Palestine did not like this idea at all. They felt that foreign nations were coming into their country and telling them what to do. The Jewish people in Europe, however, started to feel hopeful that their dream of a return to their homeland would finally come true. They started moving to the area in large numbers. The Arabs resented this sudden move. It didn't take long before fighting broke out between the two sides. In 1939, the British put a restriction on the number of Jews who could immigrate to Palestine. The Arabs were somewhat satisfied. The Jews felt that the British were turning their backs on them.3 Starting in the 1930s, Hitler's Holocaust tried to rid Europe of Jews and other peoples of non-German descent. Hitler's system of concentration camps and mass “exterminations” led to the deaths of more than six million Jews, or about two-thirds of Europe's population of Jewish people. This created an even deeper longing for a homeland for the Jewish people.